Music

Ireland’s government demanded answers from the Vatican’s ambassador Thursday…

Gilmore and Prime Minister Enda Kenny accused the Vatican of violating Ireland’s sovereignty by instructing bishops in the letter that they should place the church’s laws above the nation’s…

“There’s one law in this country. Everybody is going to have to learn to comply with it. The Vatican will have to comply with the laws of this country,” Gilmore said after his face-to-face grilling of the ambassador, a rare experience for the pope’s diplomats anywhere, let alone long-deferential Ireland.

Exactly why it’s music. It’s about fucking time. The pervasive deference to the Vatican – by no means just in Ireland – is ridiculous and appalling.

Kenny, who didn’t attend the meeting with the Vatican diplomat, said his
government soon would make it a crime to withhold evidence of child abuse from the police. He specified this would include any information a priest received during the sacrament of confession.

“The law of the land should not be stopped by a crozier or a collar,” Kenny
said.

Yessssssssss.

Kenny called the Vatican’s written intervention — first revealed in full by The Associated Press six months ago — “absolutely disgraceful.”

Irish leaders had sought formal Vatican approval. Instead the Vatican’s then-ambassador, the late Archbishop Luciano Storero, warned Irish bishops that a powerful church body, the Congregation for the Clergy, had ruled that such mandatory reporting of abuse claims to civil authorities conflicted with canon law.

Storero wrote that the Irish policy had the status of “merely a study document,” while the new Irish policy of making the reporting of suspected crimes mandatory “gives rise to serious reservations of both a moral and canonical nature.”

He wrote that canon law, which required abuse allegations and punishments to be handled within the church, “must be meticulously followed.” Any bishops who tried to impose punishments outside the confines of canon law would face the “highly embarrassing” position of having their actions overturned on appeal in Rome.

In other words the Vatican “ambassador” to Ireland ordered Irish clerics to disobey Irish law.

A former altar boy, Andrew Madden, was first to go public with his lawsuit against the Dublin Archdiocese, which had tried to settle the claim in quiet.

Madden offered one possible solution Thursday to the church’s difficulty in choosing between Ireland’s laws and its own, which still do not make explicit the need to report suspected child-abuse crimes to police.

“If the bishops want to live by canon law,” he said, “they should take themselves off to the Vatican and live there.”

“What I don’t get is conspiracy to systematically cover up child abuse is surely a criminal offence already? Why do they need a new law, why not haul them off straight away?”

It is not a criminal offense in Ireland. It used to be but the previous government removed the law from the statute books. That is why the current leader of the Irish church is nor currently locked up in prison (that is not a joke btw, cardinal Brady is the cleric who ordered the two child victims of serial child rapist Brendan Smyth to remain silent about their accusations under threat of excommunication).

Technically speaking, the Vatican was not directly ordering the Irish bishops to break Irish law.

The Vaticans instructions concerned a policy proposed by the Irish bishops, not a government document. The Irish bishops recommendations would have, if actually implemented, the effect that all accusations would have been reported to the police for investigation without a prior canon law investigation. This is what the vatican intervened to prevent from happening.

I’m looking forward to revocation of citizenship, deporting all priests to Vatican City, and seizing all church property outside of the Vatican. They want to claim sovereignty as a foreign state then they can close their unauthorized embassies, and they can take their illegal immigrant asses out of our countries and back to Rome.

Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeesssss! It’s about damn time that someone told the Vatican that church law is not higher than the law of the land. Past time. Way past time. This goes for all sorts of things, and it is good to see the Irish putting the Vatican representatives through their paces. Talk about Sharia. Let’s put a stop, a dead stop, to all religious legislation. None of it is higher than the law that applies to others, no one is above the law, and no one should be immune to the laws requirements, strictures, and penalties. Put the damn pope on trial, I say, and then, perhaps, they would learn. Try him for colluding in the abuse of children, and concealing clerical abuse. Make it clear that popes are not Vicars of Christ, but mere men in fancy dress. They may pretend all they wish, but they may not purport in law to signify anything of importance. Bishops in the US got up in Washington State and said that the law governing assisted dying in that state was opposed to the law of God, that is, to the religious law of the church. There is no reason why Washingtonians should take this kind of thing lying down. The bishops should be told in a quite peremptory way that they may teach these laws to their dependent believers, but that they have no right presuming to dictate the law to others. Bastards! Indeed, it is about time that people woke up to the kinds of shenanigans that priests and bishops get up to, and then try so sedulously to sweep it into the musty old cupboards in the Vatican. Time to call them on it. ….. Ya know! This could get me worked up!

Technically speaking, the Vatican was not directly ordering the Irish bishops to break Irish law.

Depends on what you mean by “technically speaking” and “directly,” and I think it’s basically wrong.

When the Vatican objected to the Irish reforms, it reminded the Irish bishops of their standing orders—to comply with canon law. Canon law says to cover up things that would gravely embarrass the church and shake people’s faith in its authority, if you think you can get away with it, to handle embarrassing things in-house if possible, and specifically not to go to the secular police in such cases if it can be avoided.

It also gives a “legal” (and theological and moral) rationale that the Church’s interest in protecting its image is a higher priority than bringing perpetrators to justice, because the Church is the greatest force for good in the world. The ends justify the means, because harming the Church is so all-fired Good that harm to the Church causes more harm to people than covering up and thus perpetuating mere crimes against people.

Canon law is pretty darned clear on the basic priorities, and on many of the crucial specifics—e.g., swearing victims to secrecy about embarrassing crimes and (IIRC) threatening them with excommunication if they insist on asserting their merely human rights.

The letter to the bishops was telling them that they already have their orders, and cannot change them. It was a direct order to follow their direct orders.

Morally and legally, direct orders do not have to be phrased as orders. If you tell a subordinate “you have your orders,” that itself is an order. Everybody knows what it means. Saying it “wasn’t an order” is simply a lie, and will not hold up in any court.

Hmm. I’m confused now. The way the article phrased it, it was government policy, and potential, proposed law that the government was (idiotically) seeking Vatican approval for. Maybe the article got it wrong…

It requires a particular interpretation of canon law to make the letter an order to evade the Irish laws.

That said I think we are both in agreement that the intention of the letter was to order the Irish bishops to continue with actions that put children at risk. I guess, having grown up in Ireland, I tend to pick up on different aspects than some others here and the one I’m sensing here is the use by the papal nuncio of the catholic technique of “mental reservation”. This is, essentially, a technique used by the catholic

hierarchy of utilizing plausible deniability to lie – and get away with it.

Ophelia, I think the best way to explain it is to point out something that non-Irish people might find unusual about that country. This is the fact that catholicism is treated as an official state religion. This has the effect that an internal church document (such as th 1996 bishops report) is often treated by the newspapers as something that affects the population at large. For example the biggest debate in the Irish medi following the two previous reports was should bishop x or bishop y resign from thier diocese for failing in their pastoral duties and be replaced by others. The idea that the real question should be whether we send the lot of them to prison for child abuse was nowhere near the top of the media agenda.

That makes this weeks statements so important. To hell with how the church is being run or by whom, the thing the government should be concerned about is whether they are breaking the laws that everyone needs to follow.

The funny thing, Sigmund, is that at the far edges the Catholich church is treated that way in the US too. The pope is always reported on with great deference, as though he were everyone’s pope. Maybe that’s some kind of weird reaction against previous anti-Catholicism, which was all mixed up with the KKK and ethnic hostilities and the whole poison brew, but anyway, it’s maddening.

Bruce – it already has, at least into cop tv shows. There’s an episode of Boston Legal (ok that’s a lawyer show) where a priest who is obstructing justice (I forget what the crime was) tries to bar a door to two lawyers and ends up getting a finger chopped off. They then get him to admit whatever it is by witholding the severed finger (which they found) – he has to give in if he wants to get his finger back before it’s too dead to re-attach. It’s played as farce, but it ain’t friendly to churchy obstruction of justice.

There was an episode of Law & Order where Hang ’em High McCoy had to suck up to a Jewish religious “court” in order to get extradition of a murder suspect who had fled to Israel. Nasty stuff, especially when you think about how those are well-established and backed by serious money and political influence. The so-called “sharia law” in America has no chance of getting that sort of foothold in America, but Catholics and Jews have insane influence and no one cares.

Yes, Law and Order takes on issues of this kind, and not seldom. There was one about forced marriage and “honor” violence awhile ago. Boston Legal also had one about a Catholic hospital denying “emergency contraception” to a teenage rape victim and not informing her about alternatives. It was blistering.

Kenny, who didn’t attend the meeting with the Vatican diplomat, said hisgovernment soon would make it a crime to withhold evidence of child abuse from the police. He specified this would include any information a priest received during the sacrament of confession.

“The law of the land should not be stopped by a crozier or a collar,” Kennysaid.

This in particular caught my attention, the removal of confessional privilege for these abuses. Does anyone know how we stand in the USA on getting and using information from priestly confessions in court? It struck me that every time I’ve been in therapy I’ve been told that they have to report it if I say I’m going to hurt someone (can’t remember if they had to report any confessed crimes already committed). Do we have similar requirements of priests and ministers? Or is this another area where the religious get more privilege? Is Ireland progressing faster than the US?

My impression is that Catholic priests are not required to disclose child abuse confessed in Catholic confession anywhere in the US—or confessions of murder, or anything. All confessions are supposed to be completely secret under the “seal of the confessional,” and the law generally respects that.

It’s shocking that the Irish, of all people, might change that.

The rationale I was given as a Catholic child goes roughly like this:

1. If priests are required to disclose confessions, people who’ve done the things that they’re required to disclose just won’t confess them, and that won’t help anybody.

2. If they do confess to a priest, at least the priest can talk to them about it and might have some positive influence on their future behavior.

3. If people aren’t allowed to confess say, murder, they might die without confessing those things and go to Hell forever because of it. That’s too severe a punishment, worse than death.

I think there’s some merit to the first two points, but there’s a few teeny flaws there.

1. If people really think that confessing sins is necessary to avoid a fate worse than death, they may indeed confess to a priest even if they end up in prison or even executed because of it. Cool. (And we’re talking about people who do go to confession, and do confess crimes to a priest, so that might be a significant plus to making priests reveal serious crimes.)

2. It’s not clear to me that letting people confess to crimes in secret, and “get right with God,” isn’t a terrible thing to do. People should not be able to clear their consciences in that bullshit way, even a little bit, because their crimes are crimes against their victims, not against God, and God’s simply not in a position to forgive them. It’s not about him. Third-party forgiveness is a seriously fucked up idea, and I have to wonder if it makes people devalue the interests of real human beings in favor of technicalities, rituals, and an imaginary forgiver. (I can also imagine it has some good effects—e.g. relieving people of crippling guilt that’s useless because they’re not going to undo the harm they did anyhow—but I’ve never seen a good analysis of the net effects of secret confession. Given how much Catholic guilt is about contrived bullshit anyhow, I’m skeptical it’s a net plus.)

3. There’s no Hell anyhow, so the people who choose not to confess because the priest would rat them out aren’t going there. They may have to live with thinking they’re going there, but that’s not the same.

Paul W, if you read the text of the letter in question you will see there is no direct order to flout Irish law.

I’m not sure what you mean. Are you saying that the letter doesn’t give orders, or that what it gives orders to do are not in fact violations of Irish law, or that it doesn’t explicitly say that they’re violations of Irish law and to go ahead and do them anyway?

I agree it’s not the latter.

I do think the letter clearly gives orders—it reaffirms a standing order to “meticulously” follow canon law and “canonical norms.”

As I understand the term “direct order,” it does give “direct” orders to follow “general” (codified) orders meticulously. If the general orders flout Irish law, so do the direct orders.

Note that direct orders do not have to be phrased as orders—it just has to be clear that the superior(s) tell(s) the subordinate(s) what to do. The 1997 letter makes it utterly (and redundantly) clear that’s what’s being done—e.g., they “emphasize the need” to act in accordance with canonical norms, and back it with a definite threat of dire consequences if they fail to carry out their general orders, “underline” the need to follow standing orders “meticuously,” etc.

When superiors emphasize, threaten, and underline, they’re unambiguously giving orders, even if they avoid using grammatical imperatives. Civil law clearly recognizes that.

Legally, that’s clearly giving orders, so if the general orders (canon law) are illegal under Irish Law, then any illegality resulting from following canon law was in fact due to following orders from the Vatican—not just the old orders in canon law, but the reaffirming orders in the 1997 letter.

I agree with much of what Eric McDonald says in his comment above except for the subject of assisted dying.

IN holland where assisted dying has been legal for a number of years now, the whole healthcare systeme of palliative care for dying patients has collapsed. Assisted dying is but another way for gov’ts to save money on healthcare costs.

The seal of the confessional is absolute in Catholic theology, because their God thing is more important than those mere people things that are harmed by crimes. Which, hey, I can agree with: let them please their God thing and go to jail for what they did to people by covering up abuse, but don’t argue the people have to be nice to criminal priests because they follow God thing’s rules. It’d be better if priests didn’t break the law, but it’s much worse to build the law around them by including their God thing rules in it.

I still believe there are valid reasons not to disclose child abuse, for psychiatrists and psychotherapists and victims’ advocates. I hope the Irish law will reflect that. But even if it doesn’t, I’d trust a psychiatrist’s commitment to go to jail for a victim more than a priest’s commitment to go to jail for a criminal, and I hope no criminal will find peace of mind by hiding behind church law.

There was an episode of Law & Order where Hang ‘em High McCoy had to suck up to a Jewish religious “court” in order to get extradition of a murder suspect who had fled to Israel. Nasty stuff, especially when you think about how those are well-established and backed by serious money and political influence.

except, of course, that that’s a tv show. i cannot think of a case where a beit din would actually have influence over israeli extradition procedures, let alone united states use of them. batei din are religious courts and they are also subject to the law of the land through the long-established principle of dina de malchuta dina – “the law of the land, so it must be obeyed” you might have a problem in terms of the old “community wall of silence” issue but that’s not restricted to religious communities or religious law – although at least since the spate of recent scandals in the strictly-orthodox communities, whistle-blowers are coming forward more and more often and the presumed disapproval of the beit din doesn’t seem to stop them. corruption is corruption no matter who.

The so-called “sharia law” in America has no chance of getting that sort of foothold in America, but Catholics and Jews have insane influence and no one cares.

oh, plenty of people care. sales of the “protocols” are through the roof, you can read all about the so-called “insane influence” of jews in that. i think that is an extraordinary statement to make without any evidence. perhaps you’re suggesting that money influences political priorities? in which case, your problem should be with corruption, not with religion. i think you might be letting your personal prejudices show.

[…] Ireland's prime minister Enda Kenny summoned the Vatican's ambassador for a harsh dressing down. As Ophelia Benson put it so aptly, reading these words was like music to my ears: "There's one law in this country. […]